Page 114 of Flame and Sparrow

It wasn’t the sun.

It was a great eagle made of fire, and it was heading straight toward us.

Chapter32

Bright wings of flame unfurled,stretching nearly from one side of the courtyard to the other, as the fiery bird swooped to the ground.

Andrel crouched down in front of me as it did, panic making his eyes even wider than before. “Karys—you know I didn’t mean for that to happen. I’m sorry, I just…I need you tolistenand try to understand where I’m coming from, whereallof us are coming from. Do you realize what’s at stake for us? What your father and sister were trying to do? What we’reso closeto doing?”

I couldn’t answer, shock and pain still stealing away every word I tried to think of.

The fire behind him started to shift.

His hand stayed against my knee, holding both of us steady in the rising heat. I heaved for breath and braced my uninjured arm against the ground as I watched the fiery wings folding around the bird, cocooning its body, creating a pillar of flames that shot up toward the dark sky. After a few seconds of spinning and reaching upward, the column abruptly collapsed and the fire extinguished, sending a whoosh of heat and wind toward us as it went.

Dravyn stood among the lingering, swirling embers, his eyes the most terrifying shade of red I’d ever seen, glowing like two hellish pits of molten rock.

Those terrible eyes flashed from the broken piece of bracelet scattering the ground up to the grip Andrel had on my leg.

His voice was quiet but deadly as he said, “Let go of her.Now.”

Andrel hesitated only an instant before he complied. He was furious, stubborn, powerful—but he wasn’t stupid. He drew his hand back and took several steps away from me, his eyes never leaving the God of Fire.

Dravyn followed him.

The two of them squared up. I staggered to my feet. Movement caused pain, the pain caused dizziness, and I was forced to lean against the wall behind me for a moment to catch my balance.

A moment was all it would take for the Fire God to send Andrel and everything else in this courtyard up in flames. Panic gripped me at the thought, and I gritted my teeth, determined to go step between the two of them even as my eyes welled with tears.

Before I could, a second divine beast descended from the night sky—a cloud of mist and ice that took the form of a sleek white panther as it touched upon the ground. Its violet eyes gleamed as they fixed on me before it bounded over. Ice spread out from beneath its paws with every step, only to crackle and shatter in its wake, sending tendrils of mist up with every break. A blanket of fog soon hung over the area, cooling the air and making it a little easier to breathe.

The God of Winter and Rebirth emerged from a concentrated cloud of this fog, in his human form, his violet eyes still fixed on me. He headed straight to my side, completely ignoring both Andrel and the crowd of other elves—my allies—now rushing toward the chaotic scene.

For once, the middle-god had nothing to say; Valas merely stood like a sentinel at my side, one arm wrapped around me, holding me up, and together we watched my two worlds violently colliding.

No less than a dozen of my kind had rushed into the yard, all clamoring to make sense of what was happening. Some carried weapons, while the rest seemed to be looking around for something they could use to protect themselves.

I stood up straighter as several heads turned my way, trying to appear calm and in control, but unable to keep from wincing at the awful pain that shot through me with every tiny move I made.

Valas—still without speaking—reached out and subtly pressed a hand to my injured arm. A gentle cold swept out from his touch, soothing away some of the pain, dulling it enough that I could focus on what was being said between Andrel and Dravyn—though few words were being uttered just then.

The God of Fire had clearly not come here totalk.

As overcome by pain and confusion as I was, there was still space for fear to slip in. The stories of Dravyn’s ascension and the destruction and death he’d caused rampaged through my mind. He looked prepared to set fire to everything around him without a second thought.

Adding fuel to that fire, Andrel had drawn a weapon from somewhere—a throwing knife. He’d wielded such knives with deadly precision for as long as I’d known him; I’d once seen him drive one into a target from well over a hundred feet away.

And I had a feeling this particular knife was laced with the same mysterious, anti-divine toxin as the weapon Cillian had given me.

Of the ones who had rushed out from the house, I saw two who were armed as well, only with bows, their metal-tipped arrows nocked and drawn.

I stared hard at all these weapons, watching closely until I saw the metal flash to black as my knife had done in the presence of divine magic.

Andrel spun the knife with the focus of a madman, looking all-too-eager for a chance to test the venomous blade out on an actual god.

I tried to squirm out of the Valas’s hold, but he kept a gentle yet firm arm wrapped around my middle. “Be still,” he urged. “You’ll make your injury worse.”

I watched, terrified, as Dravyn reached a hand toward Andrel and the spinning knife.

---